Australian History
Sunday, March 7, 1954. : The “Sydney Morning Herald” reports a new craze of flattening pennies under the Royal Train of Queen Elizabeth II.
Princess Elizabeth, who became Queen Elizabeth II of the United Kingdom, was born Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor on 21 April 1926. She was proclaimed queen on 6 February 1952, following the death of her father, George VI. She ascended the throne the following year, on 2 June 1953.
The year following her coronation, Queen Elizabeth II undertook a tour of Australia. Still fiercely patriotic towards the British Monarchy, Australia received the new Queen with enthusiasm. On 7 March 1954, Australian newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald, reported a new craze which had developed amongst Australians. Many of them had taken to placing pennies on the tracks ahead of the train on which Queen Elizabeth and her entourage were travelling. The sole purpose of this activity was to have the Queen’s royal carriage flatten the coins, creating a unique souvenir of her visit.
World History
Monday, March 7, 0203. : Perpetua, a young Christian, and her slave Felicitas are martyred in the arena at Carthage.
The Roman persecution of Christians began during the reign of Nero, around 64 AD, and continued until Christianity was was embraced by the Emperor Constantine 249 years later. Vibia Perpetua was a twenty-two-year-old woman of noble birth, married though recently widowed, with a young son. She and her slave Felicitas, who herself had just given birth to a baby daughter, were among five Christians condemned, under the emperor Septimius Severus, to die in the arena. On 7 March 203, the five condemned Christians were led to the arena where the men were attacked by boar, a bear and a leopard, whilst the women were attacked by a bull. After being tossed, gored and wounded, both women were then stabbed to death by gladiators.
Their bodies were interred at Carthage. Centuries later, a majestic basilica was erected over their tomb, the Basilica Majorum, where an ancient inscription bearing the names of the martyrs has been found.
World History
Tuesday, March 7, 1876. : Alexander Graham Bell is granted a patent for the telephone.
Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 3 March 1847. It was whilst living in Canada, from 1870, that Bell pursued his interest in telephony and communications, improving on the technology that had enabled the development of the telegraph. He moved to the US shortly afterwards to continue developing his inventions.
On 7 March 1876, Bell was granted US Patent Number 174,465 for “the method of, and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically … by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sound”, i.e. the telephone. Bell and others formed the Bell Telephone Company in July 1877. Also in 1877, Bell published the details of his telephone in the “Scientific American”. Following this publication, enthusiasts from around the world began to develop their own telephones.
Bell also collaborated with other inventors to produce such items as the phonograph, photophone (a device enabling the transmission of sound over a beam of light), metal detector and hydrofoil.
World History
Sunday, March 7, 1965. : State troopers attack a group of African-American demonstrators in Alabama.
Civil rights for African-Americans, who had been denied basic equal rights in every aspect of society, began gaining prominence in the 1950s. Martin Luther King fought for civil rights, organising and leading marches for desegregation, fair hiring, the right of African Americans to vote, and other basic civil rights. Most of these rights were successfully enacted later into United States law with the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. However, not all state governors upheld the rights.
The southern US state of Alabama had seen a number of demonstrations in January and February of 1965, as African-Americans tried to draw attention to violations of existing voting rights laws. The Governor, George Wallace, had insisted on breaking up each protest forcefully, resulting in the death of activist Jimmy Lee Jackson. On 7 March 1965, State troopers and volunteer officers in Alabama broke up a demonstration by about 500 protestors using tear gas, whips and sticks after Wallace ordered the planned march from Selma to the state capital Montgomery to be halted on the grounds of public safety. Seventeen people were injured in the violence that resulted, and March 7 came to be known as “Bloody Sunday”.
Martin Luther King organised another march in the town, filing a federal lawsuit for the right to march on Montgomery. As they proceeded on March 21, they were protected by federal troops. The march lasted a week and culminated in a rally attended by thousands.
World History
Thursday, March 7, 1996. : The first photographs of Pluto’s surface are released.
For many years, Pluto was considered to be the ninth planet in the solar system, named after the Roman god of the underworld, Pluto. Recently, its status has been downgraded to that of a minor planet. Its largest moon is Charon, discovered in 1978, and two smaller moons, Nix and Hydra, were discovered in 2005. It remains the only planet that has not been visited by human spacecraft, and knowledge of Pluto is limited due to the fact that it is too far away for in-depth investigations with telescopes from earth.
Pluto remained undiscovered until the twentieth century due to its small size, being smaller than the Earth’s moon, and its unusual orbit. It was determined to be a planet on 18 February 1930 by astronomer Clyde Tombaugh at the Lowell Observatory in Arizona. However, Pluto has since been reclassified as a “planetoid” and is now considered the largest member of the Kuiper belt. Like other members of the belt, it is composed primarily of rock and ice and is relatively small: approximately a fifth the mass of the Earth’s moon and a third its volume.
On 7 March 1996, the first photographs of Pluto’s surface were released. Astronomers had constructed a global map of Pluto in 1994 by taking 12 images at 4 different longitudes in visible light and 8 images in ultraviolet light. The photographs showed clear topographic features such as craters, a northern polar cap bisected by a dark strip, one bright spot and a cluster of dark spots.